Tootfinder

Playing Terra Nil right now, and it's funny because from the promo stuff I thought I wouldn't like it much, yet I'm enjoying myself a lot. There's definitely a game design lesson to be leaned here.
I was absolutely correct in my assessment that the game feels like it's actively trying to make suspension of disbelief as hard as possible with its completely ridiculous mechanics that make absolutely zero sense. "That's... Not how that works at all!" Is basically playing on repeat in my brain.
Furthermore, the entire technosolutionist tenor of the game rubs me very much the wrong way. This compounds with the physics- and biology-defying (or perhaps -spiting) fictional layer in cases like the convenient magical radiation-absorbing buildings so that you can reverse radiation contamination with a few simple clicks to be extremely bad politics actually...
But... The mechanics do work together quite well to make interesting puzzles with good gameplay that includes satisfying variety and challenges. The art is wonderful, and the music and audio design are spot on. The the result of each level is immensely satisfying, and the pacing is excellent.
I guess the lesson I'm taking away from this is that really solid fundamentals can triumph over an absolute cacophony of ludonarrative dissonance. That doesn't mean that in every decision between ludonarrative harmony (or just straight up believability) and neat mechanics you should compromise towards mechanics, but it reinforces the idea that if you make the mechanics enjoyable in the abstract, players (or at least, players like me) will be willing to compromise a *lot* on whether it actually makes any sense for things to work that way.
I'm still bothered by the "use technology to fix everything" politics, which prevents this game from being one I'll enthusiastically recommend, but despite myself I am having a lot of fun with it.
#GameDesign #SolarPunk

to those who came to the #EuroPython Software Design and Architecture open space (and everyone else really): we mentioned the excellent book
Grokking Simplicity
and noticed that it's kinda pricey!
Conveniently, it's on sale right now: $34.64 for digital and $37.79 for print (shipped from EU).
I'm taking this opportunity to get it in print in addition to my …

Grokking Simplicity - Eric Normand
This practical guide will change the way you approach software design and development. It shows you how to write software that keeps complexity close to its inherent minimum.

Heute gibt es im local Space nen Vortrag zu Schaltungs und Platinendesign mit KiCAD. Als Sample wurde sich n DC-DC-Wandler ausgesucht. Bin mal gespannt wie sehr das Design "vom Profi" von meinen Funkstörungsgeneratoren abweicht :D

Civic Museums VII - Out! Out!🏛️
民间博物馆 VII - 快走！快走！🏛️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ LUCKY SHD 400 (FF)
If you like my work, Support by buying me a coffee or a roll of film from
PayPal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ydcdingsite
Wise

Alman is a simplified dialect of German designed to reduce the complexity of the language while maintaining mutual intelligibility with Standard German.
It systematically eliminates several complex grammatical features:
🔸Gender System: Uses a single article form for most contexts
🔸Case Markings: Removes most case-based inflections
🔸Noun Declensions: Simplifies noun endings across cases
🔸Job Titles: Eliminates gender-specific forms in occupational titles
The English home page…

Generation of synthetic CT images from optical scanning for superficial mold brachytherapy
Scott B. Crowe (Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, Brisbane Qld, Australia, Herston Biofabrication Institute, Metro North Hospital and Health Service, Brisbane Qld, Australia, University of Queensland, Brisbane Qld, Australia, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Qld, Australia), Emily Simpson-Page (Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, Brisbane Qld, Australia), Jenna Luscombe (Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, Brisbane Qld, Australia), Rachael Wilks (Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, Brisbane Qld, Australia, Herston Biofabrication Institute, Metro North Hospital and Health Service, Brisbane Qld, Australia, University of Queensland, Brisbane Qld, Australia), Tanya Kairn (Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, Brisbane Qld, Australia, Herston Biofabrication Institute, Metro North Hospital and Health Service, Brisbane Qld, Australia, University of Queensland, Brisbane Qld, Australia, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Qld, Australia)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.25221 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.25221 https://arxiv.org/html/2606.25221
arXiv:2606.25221v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Optical 3D scanning systems allow the acquisition of accurate models of patient anatomy, suitable for use in the design of simple 3D-printable patient-matched medical devices with 3D modelling software. This study developed and demonstrated the use of superficial brachytherapy surface mold design workflow that utilizes data from optical 3D surface scanning and enables a commercial brachytherapy treatment planning system to be used for catheter positioning and dose optimization steps. Synthetic CT images were generated from 14 optically scanned anatomical models of human participants. Models and skin textures ac-quired from the optical scans were imported into Autodesk Meshmixer, where the treatment area was delineated, and treatment and device volumes produced. 3D Slicer was used to convert the body, treatment and device volumes to DICOM CT and RTSTRUCT data. The synthetic CT data and contoured volumes were imported into Varian Eclipse, where catheters were designed, and dwell positions and times optimised for dose coverage of the treatment volume. The lack of in-ternal anatomy did not compromise dose calculations, due to clinical use of a TG43 based algorithm. Once 3D printed, molds can be imaged in-situ during CT simulation, and reconstructed, for clinical dose calculation and plan approval.
toXiv_bot_toot

Dust, which helps enterprises design and deploy specialized AI agents that work alongside humans, raised a $40M Series B led by Abstract and Sequoia (Chris Metinko/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/enterprise-software-deals/2026/05/18/agentic-a…

Exclusive: Agentic AI startup Dust raises $40M
The round includes strategic investment from Datadog and Snowflake.

Design Diskussion: ich bin immer noch nicht überzeugt, dass runde Displays mehr sind als Nostalgie wegen der alten Armbanduhren. Das sieht mir doch immer so aus, als ob man eigentlich sinnvoll nur den Teil benutzen kann, der ungefähr die Form der Apple Watch hat. Oben und unten werden dann immer Logos oder abgerundete Buttons eingefügt und das Display muss größer sein, als Kompromiss, damit man überhaupt was lesen kann.

Where You Tap Matters: A Probe-and-Model Benchmark for Open-Set RF Fingerprinting
Gabriele Oligeri, Savio Sciancalepore, Ingrid Huso, Fatima Al-Mousawi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.21564 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.21564 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.21564
arXiv:2607.21564v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Radio Frequency Fingerprint Identification (RFFI) enables transmitter identification at the physical layer by learning device-specific impairments from received signals, yet the literature is inconsistent about where in the receiver chain those samples should be collected. Since distinct transformations are applied to the signal by the different receiver operations, i.e., carrier recovery, gain normalization, pulse shaping, and timing recovery, they can either tighten within-transmitter variability or suppress the features RFFI requires for classification. We present a systematic real-world evaluation of open-set, reconstruction-error RFFI using data collected at five probe points along a standard BPSK receiver chain. Our results show that RFFI is strongly probe-dependent: timing recovery and, to a lesser extent, carrier recovery enable low false-acceptance operation with limited in-distribution-out-of-distribution overlap, whereas other stages often require a false-acceptance ratio above 0.1 to achieve a true-acceptance ratio of 0.9. To test the validity of our findings across model selection, we benchmark several LLM-designed autoencoders using a controlled pipeline that holds preprocessing and MSE scoring fixed. These architectures confirm that RFFI is probe-dependent. Moreover, they do not outperform the baseline at the chosen operating point and typically increase training time. Overall, probe selection dominates reconstruction-based open-set RFFI performance, more than the autoencoder complexity.
toXiv_bot_toot

Adaptive Beam Selection for Efficient Scanning Probe Tomography
San Dinh, Zichao Wendy Di, Matt Menickelly
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.21713 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.21713 https://arxiv.org/html/2606.21713
arXiv:2606.21713v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In X-ray tomography, reconstruction quality generally improves with larger numbers of projections. However, more projections increase experiment costs, acquisition time and the radiation dose imparted to the sample. One mitigation to these trade-offs is to adopt a sequential design of experiments, in which each subsequent measurement is determined as a function of previously acquired data in order to maximize information gain. In practice, a widely used heuristic to maximize information is to align beams with the edges of the sample. A key challenge, however, is that the true sample is unknown, so identifying edge-aligned beams typically requires reconstructing the sample based on available measurements. This work proposes a novel sequential design method that identifies edge-aligned measurements directly from the sinogram, bypassing any reconstruction, thereby improving computational efficiency and reducing the experimental design's susceptibility to reconstruction errors. Our method dynamically selects the next set of measurement beams by maximizing an acquisition function that balances exploration and exploitation over the domain of all possible measurements, improving reconstruction quality while reducing measurement redundancy.
toXiv_bot_toot